They say that if you placed all of this year's VCE exam papers on top of each other, you would have a pile more than 1½ times the height of Melbourne's tallest building, the Rialto.

While the theory has not exactly been tested, VCE officials say it indicates the massive task faced by more than 2000 exam assessors working around the clock to mark 315,000 papers by the end of today. "It's like a mini-Olympics," said Kevin DeLacy, assessment centre manager for the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority.

School may finally be over for the state's 45,500 year 12 students, but hard work remains for those behind the scenes.

VCAA assessment operations manager Ian Leggett said marking exams was far from simple. Each exam book is marked by an initial assessor. It is then passed on to another assessor, and if there is a discrepancy between the markings, the exam gets checked a third time. If another discrepancy is found, the paper gets remarked a fourth and final time by the chief assessor.

All subjects - except for accounting, maths, biology, chemistry and physics, where marking tends to be spot-on the first time round - are checked at least twice.

Each exam grade is also measured against two other benchmarks: a grade predicted for the student by their teacher, and the student's previous marks. Students will learn how they fared when ENTER scores are released on December 15.

Mr Leggett said the assessment process centred on fairness for each student.

"People are often surprised by the level of detail, the size of the operation, and how it's all done within such a short period of time . . . But the whole process is based around fairness. At the end of the the day, we've got to remember that each of these single (exam) books is a kid's future," Mr Leggett said.

Tightened security resulted in fewer cases of cheating this year, with only around 20 students so far being caught taking mobile phones or hidden notes into exams.

VCAA chief executive Michael White told The Age that the students would be interviewed before it was decided whether they would face a disciplinary committee. If this was to occur, the students would be the first to face the State Government's new "AFL-style tribunal" set up as part of a crackdown on exam cheats.